Regional Notes: “Be careful, the road is very dangerous” is the common refrain heard in the Dominican Republic when you mention you’re traveling to Jarabacoa. The advice rings true. The road is narrow and treacherous, but the rewards are unexpected and overwhelming. Visiting Jarabacoa, which is located in the country’s tallest mountain range, is like taking a sensory vacation. Bachata and merengue music radiates from every corner store and cool mountain air offers a respite from suffocating humidity of lower altitudes. The verdant, lush landscape is dotted with casitas painted in bright Caribbean pinks and turquoises. The intensity of these saturated colors is matched only by the hospitality and generosity of the farmers themselves. After hours of climbing steep mountain roads, one arrives the five-acre farm of Melito and his son (pictured left). Their family is 1 of 100 members of the APROCAFE association, a group of farmers that has banded together to invest in community initiatives and improve natural resource management. Meilto waxes eloquent about years past when the surrounding hills were nearly deforested, and how he and his fellow farmers have spent decades replanting and reforesting the Jarabacoa region. Today these hills have abundant shade trees that offer shelter to growing coffee shrubs. Rejoicing in the shade, Melito's coffee trees give thanks by producing cherries that yield a deliciously sweet and balanced cup.